[gentoo-user] STAR options have me confused

[Mick]

Hi All,

I do not seem to be able to run star with the correct options despite some 
experimenting ... and was hoping you could correct my errors.

I seem to have done this successfully in the past, but I am getting 
inappropriate results this time round.  This is the fs I am trying to back 
up:
========================================================
# ls -la /media/hda5
total 208
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root  4096 Feb  1 12:56 .
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root     0 Feb  1 11:45 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Dec 25 04:02 bin
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Nov 18 19:37 boot
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Nov 18 19:37 data
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Nov 19 00:37 dev
drwxr-xr-x 82 root root 12288 Feb  1 08:43 etc
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Nov 18 19:37 home
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Feb 21  2005 initrd
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root  4096 Jan 31 04:02 lib
drwx------  2 root root 16384 Nov 18 19:35 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root  4096 Feb  1 07:55 media
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Dec 23 10:46 misc
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Feb 21  2005 mnt
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Feb 21  2005 opt
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Nov 18 19:37 proc
drwxr-x---  6 root root  4096 Jan  3 05:55 root
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 12288 Nov 23 04:02 sbin
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Nov 19 00:37 selinux
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Feb 21  2005 srv
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Nov 18 19:37 sys
drwxrwxrwt  6 root root  4096 Feb  1 08:43 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root  4096 Nov 19 00:38 usr
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root  4096 Nov 19 00:43 var
========================================================

The fs is shown to be 1.1G large:
========================================================
# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
...
/dev/hda5             5.8G  1.1G  4.5G  20% /media/hda5
========================================================

I want to save the backup on a USB drive on /media/sda1.  Therefore I ran star 
as root like this:

# cd /dev/sda1
# star -xattr -H=exustar -c -f hda5_root1.star /media/hda5 -C /media/sda1

After a lot of messages like these:
========================================================
star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr 
for '/media/hda5/usr/sbin/dumpfilter'.
star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr 
for '/media/hda5/usr/sbin/ethtool'.
star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr 
for '/media/hda5/usr/sbin/traceroute6'.
star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr for '/media/hda5/usr/tmp'.
star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr 
for '/media/hda5/usr/share/firstboot/modules/rootpassword.py'.
========================================================

... it eventually completes.  What puzzles me is the size of the star archive, 
which compared to a vanilla tar archive is massive:
========================================================
# ls -la /media/sda1
total 17294256
drwxr-xr-x  2 knoppix knoppix        4096 Feb  1 13:01 .
drwxr-xr-x 14 root    root              0 Feb  1 11:45 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root    root      932474880 Dec  6 13:50 hda5_root.star
-rw-r--r--  1 root    root      867123200 Dec  6 13:26 hda5_root.tar
-rw-r--r--  1 root    root    14486097920 Feb  1 13:13 hda5_root1.star
-rw-r--r--  1 root    root      940288000 Feb  1 10:42 hda5_root1.tar
...
========================================================

Is this difference in size between the hda5_root1.tar and hda5_root1.star 
expected?  I also show above the previous back up I did as a comparison 
(although I cannot recall exactly what options I chose to run star with).
-- 
Regards,
Mick